TIFF 2016: Chadwick Boseman teases Black Panther

According to star Chadwick Boseman, his onscreen version of the famed Marvel Comics character will have some “anti-hero” traits when Black Panther arrives on screen in 2018.

“This is an anti-hero, sort of,” Boseman said inside the PEOPLE / EW / InStyle portrait studio at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, using a term used often reserved for characters like White on Breaking Bad, Tony Soprano on The Sopranos, and Don Draper on Mad Men. “I feel like although he is a superhero, he is a super anti-hero.”

Boseman is in Toronto to promote the revenge thriller Message from the King, where he stars opposite Teresa Palmer, and Luke Evans as a South African man who comes to Los Angeles looking for the people responsible for the death of his sister. The 39-year-old star says the film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday, includes an invisible connection to Black Panther: Boseman’s dialect coach.

“I ended up using the same dialect coach I had from Message from a King also, who worked with me personally along with Marvel’s dialect coach on Black Panther,” Boseman said of his Panther prep work. “Those are two characters based in continental Africa, so some of that cultural aspect of it, the swagger, parts of the dialect you may use — that cultural exploration is definitely something that transferred over [from one role to the next].”

Boseman made his debut as Black Panther in May’s Captain America: Civil War, and will appear in a standalone Black Panther film, also called Black Panther, on Feb. 16, 2018. Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Michael B. Jordan are set as costars.

Asked if he felt different putting on Black Panther’s suit for the movie, Boseman joked, “I’m Black Panther even outside the suit.”